by Elizabeth | May 11, 2010 | Learning Story
For the next few days, I’ll post some of the “cut outs” from my worldview and story research. I’ll post the link to that article when it’s up.
“There have been many times in New York City that I have seen people make professions of faith that seemed quite heart-felt, but when faced with serious consequences if they maintained their identification with Christ (e.g. missing the opportunity for a new sexual partner or some major professional setback) they bailed on their Christian commitment. The probable reason was that they had not undergone deeper ‘world-view change’. They had fitted Christ to their individualistic world-view rather than fitting their world-view to Christ. They professed faith simply because Christianity worked for them, and not because they grasped it as true whether it is ‘working’ for them this year or not! They had not experienced a ‘power-encounter’ between the gospel and their individualistic world-view. I think apologetics does need to be ‘post-modern.’ It does need to adapt to post-modern sensibilities. But it must challenge those sensibilities too. There do need to be ‘arguments.’ Christianity must be perceived to be true, even though less rationalistic cultures will not demand watertight proofs like the older high-modern western society did.” Tim Keller, Redeemer article, http://www.redeemer2.com/themovement/issues/2004/oct/deconstructing.html
by Elizabeth | Apr 30, 2010 | Learning Story
“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” Romans 12:9-10
Let’s face it, love is tough. It’s hard to know what it means to love in every situation. The challenge of love keeps us on our knees, seeking the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and guidance for the loving words to speak in each situation, the kind actions to take. Hear what Tim Keller has to say about Romans 12:9-10
First, we are told that our love must be true to our heart. Literally, the word “sincere” in Greek is an-hypokritos (unhypocritical). We are not to be phony in our dealings with people. We are not to be polite, helpful and apparently warm on the outside while on the inside despising them. This is so important because, within the church and any community which emphasizes traditional values, a culture of “niceness” can develop in which a veneer of pleasantness covers over a spirit of backbiting, gossip, prejudice. There is a total lack of “tough love” in which people love each other enough to confront and be direct about problems and sins in oneself and in one’s friends.
Second, we are told, both negatively (hate) and positively (cling) that our love must be true to God’s will. We are told here that our love must “remember” and operate on the basis of the moral order of God. We must hate (literally to “be horrified” by) what God calls evil and we must cling (literally, to glue ourselves inseparably) to what God calls good. Why is this so important? Well, because when we love someone, it so often distorts our view of good and evil. Song lyrics capture the problem: “If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right!” “It can’t be wrong, if it feels so right!” In other words, if you love someone, your heart is bound up with the heart of the other. Their distress becomes yours and their happiness becomes yours. Therein lies the temptation to give the loved one what creates emotional joy, rather than what is best for them (but which may create emotional sadness or anger). It is an extremely common problem in child rearing. The parents don’t punish children consistently because they cannot bear their tears and anger. But the result of a discipline-less childhood is always disaster.
It may seem strange to tell someone to love, and then to hate in the same sentence, but that is what Paul does. We cannot love rightly without hating rightly! Now we see that this is closely linked to the “sincerity.” Real love loves the beloved enough to be “tough.” Real love “is so passionately devoted to the beloved so that it hates every evil which is incompatible with his or her highest welfare.” (Stott) God’s law reveals how our world and our souls were designed. To disobey God’s law is always bad for the beloved. Therefore, real love is concerned about truth.
Any love that is afraid to confront the beloved is really not love, but a selfish desire to be loved. This kind of selfish love is afraid to do what is right (toward God and the beloved) if it risks losing the affection of the beloved. It makes an idol out of the beloved. It says, “I’ll do anything to keep him or her loving me!” This is not loving the person — it is loving the love you get from the person. In other words, it is loving yourself more than the person. So any “love” that cuts corners morally or that fails to confront is not really love at all.
But true love is willing to confront, even to “lose” the beloved in the short run if there is a chance to help him or her. Here is a great quote that gets this across.
“Think of how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships… Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H.Gifford wrote: ‘Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.’ The fact is… anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.”
– Becky Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons
in Tim Keller’s Romans Study, available through www.redeemer.com
by Elizabeth | Apr 20, 2010 | Learning Story
Romans 12:1 “I appeal to, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
Listen to some provocative thoughts from Tim Keller on this powerful word:
“To be “at God’s disposal” fully means: a) actively, to be willing to obey God in anything he says in any area of life, and b) passively, to be willing to thank God for anything he sends in any area of life.
Another way Paul gets across the idea of totality or entirety is by urging them to offer our bodies. This was probably startling to Graeco-Roman readers, who were brought up to believe that the body was negative and bad, and that spirituality was to cultivate the mind and soul. But Paul is saying that God does not just want a purely inward and abstract worship, but a practical and total one. He wants us to give him everything that we do.
“Paul made it plain, in his exposure of human depravity in 3:13ff, that it reveals itself through our bodies, in tongues which practice deceit and lips which spread poison, in mouths which are full of cursing and bitterness, in feet which are swift to shed blood, and in eyes which look away from God. Conversely, Christian sanctity shows itself in the deeds of the body. So we are to offer different parts of our bodies… to God as ‘instruments of righteousness’ (6:13,16,19). Then our feet will walk in his paths, our lips will speak the truth and spread the gospel, our tongues will bring healing, our hands will lift up those who have fallen… our arms will embrace the lonely and the unloved, our ears will listen to the cries of the distressed, and our eyes will look humbly and patiently towards God.”
– John Stott, Romans
The word “living” may mean that the sacrifice is a constant thing. The word sacrifice actually means “to kill.” That makes it a “living killing!” It means that we have to continually renew our position as wholly obedient and at God’s disposal.”
From Tim Keller, Leader’s Guide for Romans Bible Study
by Elizabeth | Feb 25, 2010 | Learning Story
"Slaying Isaac" by Marc Chagall
I’ve been reading Tim Keller’s excellent work on idolatry, Counterfeit Gods. He uses the story of Abraham and Isaac to demonstrate one aspect of idolatry — how we can come to love good things so much that we depend on them for life and meaning. Today I post a few “clips” from his discussion of this famous story.
“Previously, Abraham’s meaning in life had been dependent on God’s word. Now it was becoming dependent on Isaac’s love and well-being. The center of Abraham’s life was shifting. God was not saying you cannot love your son, but that you must not turn a loved one into a counterfeit god. If anyone puts a child in the place of the true God, it creates an idolatrous love that will smother the child and strangle the relationship.”
“What Abraham was able to see was that this test was about loving God supremely. In the end the Lord said to him, “Now I know you fear God.” In the Bible, this does not refer so much to being “afraid” of God as to being wholeheartedly committed to him. In Psalm 130:4, for example, we see that “the fear of God” is increased by an experience of God’s grace and forgiveness. What it describes is a loving, joyful awe and wonder before the greatness of God. The Lord is saying, “Now I know that you love me more than anything in the world.” That’s what “the fear of God” means.”
“The All-seeing God knows the state of every heart. Rather, God was putting Abraham through the furnace, so his love for God could finally “come forth as pure gold.” It is not hard to see why God was using Isaac as the means for this. If God had not intervened, Abraham would have certainly come to love his son more than anything in the world, if he did not already do so. That would have been idolatry, and all idolatry is destructive.”
“As long as Abraham never had to choose between his son and obedience to God, he could not see that his love was becoming idolatrous.”
One caution: Keller goes on to explain that Abraham did not have to kill Isaac, that God offered a substitute. Sadly, I have heard too many tales of people in ministry y using this story to justify putting ministry before their children. Let us be very careful. The story is not saying we sacrifice children. And putting needs of ministry before needs of children is only trading one idol for another. The story is calling us to take anything that we are dependent on for life and meaning and put it on the altar and see how Jesus died so that we might no longer be enslaved to that idolatrous god.
For reflection:
1. Is there anything in your life that you might have come to love more than anything in the world?
2. Is there something you are looking to for security and significance more than God?
3. What might it mean to bring this idol to the altar?
